A new documentary, “Whitney,” explores the meteoric rise of the late music superstar Whitney Houston, as well as her tragic downward spiral. Ahead of the film’s release on July 6, TODAY’s Sheinelle Jones sat down with Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law, to discuss the family secrets that are laid bare on camera.

LGBT people are paying tribute today to The Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan, who has died at age 46.

The Irish band broke through in the ‘90s with “Linger” and then became the music of many young people. Although O'Riordan was straight, her music inspired LGBT people. Queer singer Lane Moore, of the band It Was Romance, put it clearly, writing on Twitter that “Her music helped me not die when I thought life would kill me.”

I first met David Cassidy, the former star of The Partridge Family who died Tuesday, during an interview about two decades ago. Shortly thereafter, we hung out together backstage after he completed a set of bubblegum hits that had thousands of 40-something-year-old women screaming like they were teenagers again.

We spoke on multiple occasions since then and, well before his dementia set in, I caught up with him while he was golfing for an on-the-record interview that continued when he returned home. The interview, though, remained unpublished, until now.

Fats Domino, one of the architects of rock 'n' roll, died Tuesday at his daughter's suburban New Orleans home. Haydee Ellis, a family friend, confirmed the news to NPR. Mark Bone, chief investigator for the Jefferson Parish coroner's office, tells NPR that Domino, who was 89, died of natural causes.

In the 1940s, Antoine Domino Jr. was working at a mattress factory in New Orleans and playing piano at night. Both his waistline and his fan base were expanding. That's when a bandleader began calling him "Fats." From there, it was a cakewalk to his first million-selling record — "The Fat Man." It was Domino's first release for Imperial Records, which signed him right off the bandstand.

Law enforcement officials told TMZ that the singer was found in his home in Palos Verdes Estates in L.A. County on Thursday morning. The Los Angeles Coroner spokesman Brian Elias told The Associated Press that authorities are investigating Bennington’s death as an apparent suicide, but no additional details are available.

Bennington had struggled with drug use in the past, and, according to TMZ, had spoken about taking his own life after being a victim of child abuse. The singer opened up about his experience with drugs in a 2016 interview with TeamRock.com, saying, at one point, he was “on 11 hits of acid a day.”

Chris Cornell, a key figure in the grunge rock movement as the banshee-voiced singer in the seminal Seattle band Soundgarden, killed himself in a hotel room after playing a Wednesday night concert with the group, authorities said.

Cornell, 52, was found dead early Thursday in his room at the MGM Grand Detroit, police said. The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death as suicide by hanging. A full autopsy report has not been completed, the medical examiner said in a statement.

“It is with great sadness that we can confirm our beloved son, brother and friend George passed away peacefully at home over the Christmas period,” Michael’s publicist confirmed to Entertainment Weekly and PEOPLE.

“The family would ask that their privacy be respected at this difficult and emotional time. There will be no further comment at this stage.”

Thames Valley Police said South Central Ambulance Service attended a property in Goring in Oxfordshire at 13:42 GMT and authorities say there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, according to the BBC.

In any case, talking about sex is hardly new for gay artists. They were doing the dirty in song almost 100 years ago, in 1920s Harlem, when blues singers such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith sang about same-sex affairs. Even gay men, less documented than the women, took advantage of a brief new social permissiveness following the first world war – George Hannah wrote and sang Freakish Man Blues in 1930. Away from the blues, there was the first gay pride anthem in 1920, Das Lila Lied (aka The Lavender Song), written by Berlin-based duo Spoliansky and Schwabach, through to the stars of the so-called Pansy Craze, popular in New York from 1930. From this came Gene – sometimes spelled Jean – Malin, whose 78rpm single I’d Rather Be Spanish Than Mannish predated Noël Coward’s none-more-camp delivery and innuendo. But the Pansy Craze was quickly snuffed out when 1929’s economic crash snowballed into the Great Depression, unleashing a new wave of religious bigotry and social repression.

A mind-boggling 1.23 billion – that’s a rough (and conservative!) estimate when you add up the achievements of these 11 top-selling LGBTI musicians.

We thought we’d tot up the numbers following today’s news that Queen’s Greatest Hits package is officially the UK’s biggest-selling album, with 6.1 million copies sold.

Of course, it all comes down to how you decide to define ‘LGBTI music artist’. Madonna and Rihanna’s have both sold over 200 million records, and according to reports, have both experimented sexually – but neither have ever publicly identified as LGBTI.

We’re also discounting multi-million selling bands like *NSYNC and Westlife here, even though they contained gay members (Lance Bass and Mark Feehily, respectively), choosing instead to focus on bands with gay frontmen, like Queen and R.E.M.

And while it’s impossible to know exact figures (veteran artists’ discographies are always hotly-contested), in the interest of giving these high achieving LGBTIs their dues, we’re giving it our best shot based on the information out there… respect, guys!